Pick of the Week

July 16, 2008 – Scalped #19

What did the
iFanboy
community think?

155
Pulls
Avg Rating: 4.6
iFanboy Community Pick of the Week Percentage: 8.7%
 
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Size: pages
Price: 2.99

There’s something almost unfair about Scalped. It’s like every other book out this week isn’t even playing in the same league as this Jason Aaron and R.M. Guéra masterpiece.

It should be mentioned that this book is very adult and not for everyone and this issue in particular is not for the prudish or the faint of heart. But then, that’s what makes it so special

Everything about Scalped is dirty. The people are dirty, their motivations and actions are dirty, the landscape is dirty. There’s never a panel in Scalped where the hero arrives and we get a nice shot from a low angle of a hands-on-the-hips pose. There are no clear heroes. There is Dashiell Bad Horse and he is the protagonist of the book, but he is certainly not a hero in the traditional comic book sense. I don’t know that you could ever call a cop who drinks and drives while on duty truly heroic. Instead of black and white heroics we get devastatingly penetrating reality and so real it’s scary examinations on humanity.

Scalped #19 is all about Dashiell and his current lady… er, friend Carol. They spend most of their time together having sex and not talking. Up until this point, that made a lot of sense in their relationship as Dashiell is full of rage and trust and love issues. Carol, we don’t know a lot about, but in this, the first issue of an arc that seems to be mostly about her. And in Scalped #19 we’re learning fast. She’s the outcast daughter of Chief Red Crow (the local crime boss and “villain” of this book), she’s a waitress, she’d divorce her no-good husband if she could afford it, and like most of the people on the reservation that we’ve met in this book she’s got a pretty bad substance abuse problem.

Up until this issue Carol really hasn’t seemed like anything more to Dashiell than being someone for him to sex out his anger at the world and at her father.And for most of this issue we aren’t shown much to the contrary. They have sex and they have terse, mostly monosyllabic conversations in the post-coital glow and spend the quiet time flashing back to painful memories in their lives. Then they go to work. That’s about it.

Then after a particularly bad day for Dashiell and a — sadly, somewhat common seeming — bad day of waitressing for Carol they come back together again for more carnal catharsis. But this time, as they lay there smoking cigarettes and not talking we are let inside their heads, into their inner most thoughts and it is absolutely and totally heartbreaking. There is so much that Dashiell and Carol want to say to each other — feelings, buried secrets, fears, day-to-day drudgery, confessions, memories, the kind of things that two people in the throes of new love spend hours saying to each other. But not Dashiell and Carol. They can think them, but they don’t have the strength, they don’t have the courage, to say the words out loud. It’s much easier for Carol to smoke the heroin she bought after work and for Dashiell to drink and beat the hell out of criminals.

I haven’t read a single page so emotionally wrenching in a long, long time. Jason Aaron is so good on this book it’s just not fair to everyone else.

Scalped is so dense and packs in so much story and so much real human emotion that I am constantly surprised that it hasn’t even been out for nineteen months. It feels like it’s been out for years. It feels like it’s always been around. We should be so lucky.

Conor Kilpatrick
It’s the unspoken words you always regret.
conor@ifanboy.com

Comments

  1. Damn good review here. Makes me wish I wasn’t reading Scalped in trade. But alas, I am reading it in trade. Le sigh.

     

  2. I’m reading it in trade, as well. 🙁 When does Vol. 3 come out?

  3. I haven’t read any Scalped, but this review is making me wonder if I should be… To the comic book store!

  4. I am right there with you Conor, great issue.  The two after-sex scenes, especially the second one, really make you wish that the characters would break free and talk to each other.  I was really glad to see their relationship, which had seemed purely lustful, be seen as more.  Clearly the characters are trying to connect, but unfortunately all they can do is engage in hot, steamy sex.  I guess that is one way to connect, but me thinks they might appreciate a bit more.

     My POW as well…if you couldn’t tell.

  5. AGH im so happy i started this series. I got the 2 trades and all the issues after the second trade and i am so happy i started this series. thanks iFanboys

  6. I figured would pick this. I’m going to have try to catch up to this in issues.

  7. "I haven’t read a single page so emotionally wrenching in a long, long time."

    I’d agree with you Conor if the last arc of Criminal didn’t exist!

    Anyway, wow! What an issue, Jason Aaron is my new second-favorite writer right now. So good! 

  8. Terrific issue in an outstanding series.  Jason Aaron is right there with Fraction, Hickman & Geoff Johns as my favorite writers out there at the moment. 

    Scalped was easily the best book I read this week.  The only other above average book for me was Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge, which was pretty good.  After that, it was a big ol’ pile or average (Batman and the Outsiders, Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel 1985) to below average (Mighty Avengers—yawn—and X-Factor, with its especially bad art).  Even my beloved Captain America was just ok—really ready for that book to pick up and resolve some things.

  9. Avatar photo Paul Montgomery (@fuzzytypewriter) says:

    What a cover, right?  I was this close to picking it up, but like most…waiting for the trade.  

  10. *sign post in distance, read’s as:*

    I will not be commenting on the POTW, nor will I show pleasure or pain for the pick. I do not want to cause a fiasco like last week and I hope to try and make some friends before we all go Gitmo on my ass. Good job as always Ifanboy, cant wait for the podcast

  11. I’m intrigued by this book, definitely gonna get the trades.

  12. So would you say "gut punch"?

  13. @Jim, your dislike of X-Factor’s art breaks my heart. Larry Stroman and Peter David on X-Factor were like the very last thing I was reading before giving up on comics altogether as a kid.

  14. @Jimski  I’m afraid I’m with Jim.  There’s a nostalgia factor to Stroman being on the book, but his style looks really jarring with modern coloring, and in this issue it was hard to recognize characters from one panel to the other. 

  15. Great opening scene with Dash’s father, easily my POW

  16. I feel awful every time I read this book.  The scene with Dash’s dad and the ending really just punch you in the gut.  I can never get enough of this and Criminal.

  17. I feel like a lot of the "good" books being published right now (Scalped, Criminal, Walking Dead, Fear Agent) are trying to get me to kill myself.

  18. Deja Vu all over again.

    once again my Comic Shop didnt have any left by the time I went in Wed afternoon. i think the owner orders like 2 copies. thank god for trades

  19. I am waiting to get this in a hardcover collection…I want this bad, but I’m trying to get my bookshelf to look classy.

     

  20. Very nice review my man! I love the cover of this issue……..

  21. @mistersizzle – wow, that’s some serious patience you got there. You had to wait 60 issues and the end of the run for Y The Last Man to reach HC. You could be talking decades here!!!

    For those interested the 3rd TPB comes out October 1st which goes up to issue 18, so you can pick this and next issues up and be all up to date when the trade comes.

     It’s what I’m doing – books this good can’t wait…..

  22. Nice pick Conor!  I really enjoyed this issue, but the art was really bad.  I noticed you didn’t really mention it in your review?  Did you look past it because the story was so good?  This was a great issue, and that final sequence was a really great emotional piece.  I love this book.

  23. @kartoffelkopf I don’t mind waiting at all for a high quality hardcover…I’m tired of buying things twice.

  24. @mistersizzle – Honestly, I don’t think it sells that well.  They’ve only done hardcovers of 2 Vertigo series so far, and that’s Sandman and Y: The Last Man.  I’d be surprised if that ever happened.

  25. My thoughts on this issue: Wow.

    This book is so consistantly amazing, it’s scary.

    Killer cover, too. I want it as a poster.

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